Since Kabul has shitty rules — due to Taliban rule, but has since changed after the Karzai administration enforced a new code of conduct in 2012 — in regards to women, they cannot ride bicycles. Crazy right?! To combat the foolishness of the rule, in 2007 Australian skateboader Oliver Percovich started a grassroots program Skateistan. The project provides a link between the youth and education through skateboarding in Afghanistan. The organization has since ballooned into an award-winning NGO (non-governmental organization).
And because of this, skateboarding has become the number one sport among women in Afghanistan.
So in 2012, London-based photographer Jessica Fulford-Dobson traveled to Kabul. Upon learning that 45% of the students were female, she snapped a few photos in order to share the beauty of the program and simple brilliance of her subjects.
“I met so many impressive women and girls in Afghanistan: a teacher as tough and determined as any man; young Afghans in their early twenties who were volunteering at an orphanage and were passionate about being seen as strong and willing to fight for themselves, rather than as victims of circumstance; and girls who were being educated to be leaders in their communities and who were already thinking carefully about their own and their country’s future,” said Fulford-Dobson.
via: Colossal
